Development and validation of a brief screening version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire

Bernstein, D. P., Stein, J. A., Newcomb, M. D., Walker, E., Pogge, D., Ahluvalia, T., ... Zule, W. (2003). Development and validation of a brief screening version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. Child Abuse & Neglect, 27(2), 169-190. DOI: 10.1016/S0145-2134(02)00541-0

Objective: The goal of this study was to develop and validate a short form of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (the CTQ-SF) as a screening measure for maltreatment histories in both clinical and nonreferred groups.

Method: Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the 70 original CTQ items were used to create a 28-item version of the scale (25 clinical items and three validity items) and test the measurement invariance of the 25 clinical items across four samples: 378 adult substance abusing patients from New York City, 396 adolescent psychiatric inpatients, 625 substance abusing individuals from southwest Texas, and 579 individuals from a normative community sample (combined N=1978).

Results: Results showed that the CTQ-SF’s items held essentially the same meaning across all four samples (i.e., measurement invariance). Moreover, the scale demonstrated good criterion-related validity in a subsample of adolescents on whom corroborative data were available.

Conclusions: These findings support the viability of the CTQ-SF across diverse clinical and nonreferred populations.